


things you said

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Category: Bleach, Free!, Haikyuu!!, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Ficlets, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, collection, prompt meme, things you said meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 13,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5300633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a collection of ficlets I wrote for a <a href="http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/post/132212527945/send-me-a-ship-and-one-of-these-and-ill-write-a">"things you said" meme</a> on Tumblr.</p><p>Pairings and prompts are reflected in chapter titles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. daisuga: things you said when i was crying

There’s a reason why Daichi chooses this stairwell, though he doesn’t know it till his feet find their way there, unthinking, with a juice box in his hand; he looks down at it, wondering what he’d ended up buying.  _Orange._

He leans out the window, pierces the metal foil with his straw’s pointy end and drinks deeply.

_One minute. Just one._

Daichi counts down from sixty. Feels the citrus tang tickle the back of his throat, and tells himself, yeah, that’s what he’s feeling - that’s the lump that’s rising there - his shoulders are heaving, his breaths coming up short and ragged -

_Forty-five. Forty-four._

On forty, the first tear glides slowly down his cheek.

Daichi sighs at last with everything he couldn’t let out yesterday. Not in front of Suga and Asahi.

“Of course I wanted to stay,” Daichi mutters. “You knew that, Suga.”

The warm summer wind catches the oath that follows, whips his words out into the courtyard far below, into the hills of Miyagi for the world to hear. His confession. His catharsis.

It’s then that he hears the footstep from behind, a fraction before that voice he’d know anywhere, even if he hadn’t recognised the footstep itself.

“Mmm. I did.”

Daichi starts as he turns, although, if he’s pressed for  _why_ , he doesn’t know the reason he’s surprised.

Of course Suga would find him here. There’s a poetic kind of bookending to this narrative. Here, where he tried, and failed, to pretend he could let go,  _here_ , where he’s facing his truth.

Of course it’d be Suga.

Suga, propping his elbows on the ledge next to Daichi, looks him straight in the eye.

Daichi feels his grip round his juice box tighten.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” says Suga.

And in time to come, Daichi will remember this as the moment of his ruination:

That it doesn’t need to take a devastating loss, the sight of all his teammates crying into their food, the camaraderie of heartbreak to drive him to tears; he’ll remember that he can hold it together through a fall and a chipped tooth in the middle of a match, and still go utterly to pieces at the plain, unadorned reassurance that Suga understands him.

It is as simple as that. Those are all the words Suga needs to say.

Daichi feels an arm come round his shoulder as he weeps, holding him as he’s never been held before, and the surety of the touch speaks volumes.


	2. makoharu: things you said with too many miles between us

_How far is too far?_

One minute: thirty-three seconds if they’re in a hurry, and take the steps at a run. There were times, in their childhood, that distance took a longer time, and seemed further.

 _I missed you, Haru-chan!_  Makoto had called, once, from the bottom of the steps, and Haruka had smiled a quiet little smile to himself in the shadow of the gate where Makoto couldn’t see; called back: 

_What are you talking about? I’m right here._

Twenty-four minutes, an unknown number of miles: Haruka counts the stations in between them to pass the time. Unlike Makoto and Rin, he’s never picked up the habit of listening to music on his commute; he welcomes the silence, lets the sounds of the city sink into him. The  _whoosh_  of the train, the rhythm of steady shuffling feet, the pleasant drone of the train announcements.

Makoto texts him. Sometimes, Haruka texts him back. He doesn’t always remember. It doesn’t come naturally, reaching for his phone, and it takes him a couple of months to learn to check it after training, where it’s normally buried at the bottom of a pile of swim gear.

Ten hours, eleven minutes. 4,680 miles: the first time he makes the journey from Tokyo to Sydney on his own, Makoto waves him off at Haneda with a smile. Despite the interminable flight that he knows awaits him, suddenly, it’s the distance between them that seems the longer; for it is impassable, a glass wall between them that, palm to palm, they try to bridge.

Makoto mouths a farewell at him, and Haruka turns to face the departures board.

Perhaps there’ll be a text when he lands. Perhaps there won’t. They never needed so many words, when they were together all the time; and the thing is, Haruka’s learned -

Makoto’s words are the same, no matter how far apart they are.

He’ll ask Haruka about dinner, tease him about eating nothing but  _saba_ , and he’ll come wailing in a panic about yet another thing he’s managed to burn while cooking. He’ll tell him about Ran and Ren and what they’re getting up to back home, and Haruka will feel the old familiar fondness well up, see them clearly in his mind’s eye. Not so small anymore.

Neither are they, Haruka and Makoto.

It’s an awfully grown-up thing to do, this quiet acceptance: watching planes and trains and buses carry each other away, to places they can’t follow.

Yet, as the years and the miles pass, Haruka finds himself thinking that perhaps, it was never about  _how far is too far?_  for them. It’s always been -

_How close is close enough?_

And the answer, in a simple text that he reads on the steps of Sydney Harbour, lies in plain sight.

 _Miss you,_  says Makoto from Tokyo. He adds a smiley face after that.

Haruka’s reply is as succinct as it’s ever been.

_What are you talking about? I’m right here._


	3. adam/ronan: things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this post](http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/97610436026/dear-maggie-do-you-mind-doing-a-rbiii-character) from Maggie herself, about the music of the characters.

“Why, exactly,” asked Adam, “did we rent this movie?”

Ronan, crouching down in front of the DVD player, turned; the twisting motion wound the tattoo on his back into a sinuous vine, beautiful, hooked thorns reaching for Adam. He grinned. It was not a particularly comforting sight.

“Because I saw this video on YouTube.”

“You what, now?”

Ronan picked up the remote control and tossed it to Adam. “Here, you make it work. You’re better with this electronic shit.”

“Go back to the part about the YouTube video,” Adam said, not to be deterred.

“It’s  _viral_ , man. You must have seen it,” said Ronan, still on his feet. He walked over to Gansey’s desk, picked up a white paper cup and unceremoniously dumped all the stationery in it on the table.

Adam took this in his stride. Ronan had done stranger things.

He turned back to the TV, raised the remote and hit  _play_  as Ronan settled back down next to him, cup in hand. Close up, Adam could see the telltale green of the Starbucks siren on the other side; this was the cup they’d nicked from DC, then, with Ronan’s name written on the other side.

They played this game in coffee shops sometimes, all of them: giving each other’s names when they went. It gave Adam a cheap thrill to say  _Ronan_  when asked.

_Please don’t stop the music - music -_

Ronan set the cup down on the floor, upended, and tapped it restlessly with his knuckles. His lip curled to match his magnetic, wild-eyed gleam.

“It’s like this. This chick, she’s auditioning for her college  _a cappella_  group, and she does this crazy thing with a cup, like -  _so_  - ”

Ronan, brow furrowed in concentration, performed an extraordinary series of rhythmic manoeuvres with the cup while singing under his breath, and swore when he missed a beat.

“It’s been driving me  _nuts_ ,” Ronan admitted with a frown.

Adam stared. “You’ve been practising.”

“Noah showed it to me when I couldn’t sleep, one night. I can’t get the fucking thing out of my head. So we have to watch this movie.”

Of course they had to watch this movie. Ronan didn’t do things by halves.

They watched, Adam in silence, Ronan humming; they bumped knees and ankles and the bare skin of his shoulder, exposed beneath a sleeveless tank top, brushed Adam’s forearm where they both stretched lazily.

And Adam, allowing himself the rare luxury of a smile, wondered:

Was this what it was, to be normal? To spend a weekend afternoon watching a DVD because of a video they saw on the Internet, downing cans of Coke? To do what teenage boys their age did, instead of chasing dead kings and mysterious forests into their dreams?

He felt Ronan shift, reach out and grab him by the wrist. His fingers were surprisingly gentle, for such a death grip.

“It’s coming. That damned cup song.”

_I’ve got my ticket for the long way round_  
_Two bottles of whiskey for the way_

Adam hit pause.

“Do it again,” he said, and Ronan tried, as Adam rewound and replayed the scene, keen-eyed gaze flicking back and forth between Ronan and the TV.

“You’re doing it wrong, Lynch,” was his final judgement.

Ronan snorted. “ _You_  do it, then.”

Adam, with his lifetime of watching, his lifetime of imitation, picked up the cup, and did.

_And I sure would like some sweet company_  
_And I’m leaving tomorrow, whaddaya say…_

“Fuck you, Parrish,” said Ronan, and in his mouth, Adam’s name became the purest of benedictions.

And Adam, with a derisive laugh and a heart that felt like it might burst, shoved Ronan back down onto the cushions and kissed him hard, because he never sounded more respectful than when he was swearing at him; and if there was one thing he’d learned from his speckled upbringing, it was never to take a gentleman for granted -

Even one with questionable taste in movies, and decidedly even more so in memes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> n.b. in case you don’t know this movie, they are watching Pitch Perfect and this is [the Cups song by Anna Kendrick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhECTE2-Oqc)


	4. kageken: things you said too quietly

He appears on the edge of Kageyama’s vision, just for the length of a whisper - as long as it takes to draw, and expel one ghost-white breath on this winter’s night -

And then, silent as a shadow, he vanishes into a crowd.

Kageyama, blinking snowflakes out of his eyelashes, shakes his head and walks on.

Here in Tokyo, the snow isn’t like in Miyagi, when it falls. If it was ever pristine, it turns grey within 0.02 seconds of landing on the pavement, where thousands, tens of thousands, of people tread. Kageyama Tobio, second-year university student, is only one of them in this faceless metropolis. So is Kozume.

He knows this for a fact, because Hinata had told him, very excitedly,  _Kenma’s there too! You should meet up!_ , and Kageyama had said,  _what would we talk about? You said he isn’t playing anymore._

The words out of his mouth had cut him to the quick, nearly as much as Hinata’s expression; that admission, terse and abrupt, that after all this time, he still doesn’t know how to make a friend outside of volleyball.

He’s thought about Kozume, on and off, since that conversation.

The yellow coat up ahead looks familiar. It whips round a corner, on feet that are moving surely, across ground they clearly know well.

 _Perhaps it was him, after all._  Kageyama’s eyes have always been sharp, haven’t they?

He’s vivid, in retrospect: Kageyama never knew what others were talking about, when they spoke of Kozume fading into the background. In the theatre of Kageyama’s high school memories, wherever Nekoma is, there’s Kozume at the centre of it all - Kozume with his subtle mind, his fluid movements, almost like -

Kageyama’s steps quicken as he reaches the corner up ahead.

_Like him. It was him._

There are some things that are seared into his mind. The turn of an ankle. The way those shoulders hunch, ever so slightly, and unfold to fish his phone from his pocket… how many times in Tokyo had he seen that movement, so many summers ago?

 _Kozume,_  he tries to call, but the name dries up on his tongue;  _Kenma,_  he wants to say.

He’s annoyed with himself. He doesn’t even know why he’s trying. Kozume probably won’t remember him.

Under the light of a bus stop, through the mist, Kageyama sees a telltale strand of blond peek out from under the coat’s hood. Gold against yellow, it’s nearly invisible. He wonders if Kozume still tries his hardest to go unnoticed.

He swallows his words, holds back; thinks about a boy who only ever wanted to fit in, when the thing was - to an outsider like Kageyama, watching him with his teammates, it was plain to see -

He already did.

_If they could turn back time…_

Perhaps he, too, would have tried harder to make friends. Perhaps he would have succeeded, if it was someone like Kozume.

Frustration speeds his pace; the treacherously slippery pavement keeps him in check. Up ahead, Kageyama glimpses the shimmering reflection of oncoming headlights on the road, and when he looks up, he’s just in time to see the boy throw his hood back as he boards the bus that’s pulled over.

It’s the sight of those flashing eyes, clear and bright as they’ve ever been in the dim pulse of evening, that finally makes Kageyama’s breath come rushing back to him.

He opens his mouth.

“Kozume - ”

But it’s too late. He’s gone.

And Kageyama’s cry for connection, for the soft, understanding voice of someone who knows what it is to feel estranged sometimes, has come out too quiet, far too quiet to be heard over the roar of the engine, the wild beat of his heart thumping in his suddenly hollow chest.


	5. kurodai: things you said at 1 am

There’s a figure down the road.

Well, thinks Kuroo, this  _is_  Tokyo, after all. But they’re in the suburbs, near a school neighbourhood, and midnight’s an hour gone.

The summer night’s sultry. He approaches cautiously, quietly; the buzzing of the street lamps and telephone wires overhead are louder than his footsteps, and for that, he knows, he has years of sleepovers with Kenma to thank. His neighbour’s a notoriously light sleeper.

The figure’s in no hurry, so neither is Kuroo. They’re shorter than him, with blocky shoulders that look like they’re carrying the weight of the world.

_Ah,_  thinks Kuroo, as the penny drops.

_It’s Sawamura._

Shinzen is tucked away on a hill, where the foliage is abundant and so are the bugs. Kuroo knows well enough to pack copious amounts of mosquito repellent to this particular camp; Sawamura, it seems, does not.

He stops to swat something from his arm, turns so his face is half in the light. Dust motes dance in the still air just above his brow.

“Hey,” Kuroo calls.

Sawamura turns, startled. “Oh - Kuroo. It’s you.”

Kuroo walks up to him, leans against the fence at the top of the stairs and props himself up by his elbows, as he gazes down the hill into the carpark and the bicycle bay. He listens for the rustling of the sycamores, the crickets’ chirps.

But there is nothing, not tonight; only the sound of Sawamura’s firm tread behind him.

“Couldn’t sleep, either?” Kuroo asks, with a glance in his direction.

Sawamura gives him a knowing smile behind steely eyes, the exact same expression that once made Kuroo think,  _this guy’s the cunning type._

“You too, huh?” says Sawamura.

Kuroo returns the smile with a lazy grin of his own.

Sawamura joins him by the railing. He doesn’t let himself hunch over like Kuroo does; he stands tall and straight, sturdy hands gripping the cool metal the same way he hangs on tight to everything else.

“You’ve probably been to so many of these,” says Sawamura, quietly.

Kuroo shoots him a curious look. “Hmm?”

“Training camps. I haven’t. I mean, Karasuno hasn’t, so I haven’t.”

“You’re here now,” says Kuroo.

“Yeah,” says Sawamura, with a determined nod. “That’s why we have to make the most of it. That’s why - ”

He breaks off abruptly, looks Kuroo straight in the eye. He isn’t smiling now.

Kuroo lets out a sigh that’s like a low hiss, into the sweltering, sticky stillness of the night.

“It isn’t just you, you know, Sawamura. It’s  _my_  last chance too.”

“I know,” says Sawamura, and Kuroo, feeling reckless, barrels on.

“The next time we meet on the court, in a tournament…”

“One of us will have to lose,” Sawamura finishes.

Kuroo knows it is inescapable. He feels it coming for them, in the way of destined encounters. He’s looking forward to it - he’s dreading it -

When he looks at Sawamura’s expression, he knows he’s feeling the same way.

And Kuroo thinks, perhaps this is something they can admit, here and now, only because it’s one in the morning and the time is ticking over into hazy, half-real memories. When they part, they’ll bury this in the same place they’ve hidden all their doubts, and they’ll be every bit the captains that they are, that they have to be for their teams.

For now, though, they have each other.

“No regrets,” says Sawamura. “No matter what happens. That’s all I want.”

“No regrets,” Kuroo echoes.

Sawamura’s steady gaze on his burns like a brand, one that Kuroo knows he’ll carry, well into tomorrow.


	6. makoharu: things you said when you were drunk

“My head hurts,” says Haru, flushed red.

“Uh-huh,” says Makoto.

They’re lying back on a picnic mat that’s too small, elbows bumping, at the top of a grassy knoll; the starlit sky winks down at them, and Makoto reaches out without looking. His hand closes round the glass mouth of a bottle, and he prises it from Haru’s grip with some difficulty. At any other time, he’d never be able to do this. It seems Haru’s a pliant kind of drunk.

He lifts the bottle closer to his eyes, squints by the dim moonlight to make out the label and nearly drops it on his face.

“ _Shochu?_ ” he squeaks. “Haru, this is  _35 percent_! Please tell me you’ve been mixing it with water or something…”

“Ran out of water,” Haru murmurs.

“Ran out of water,” Makoto repeats.

“So. Opened this.”

“Okay. Right. How many bottles have you drunk?”

Haru holds up one finger, cocks it at a weird angle and stares at it contemplatively.

_That’s not so bad,_  Makoto’s about to say. He sets the bottle down on his other side, well out of Haru’s reach. But then Haru blinks, and slowly, another finger rises to join the first, then another.

Makoto’s mouth falls open. “ _Three?_ ”

With a visible effort, Haru turns to give him a look, eyes rolling upwards. He winces.

“Don’t move,” Makoto orders, at the same time as Haru offers the succinct explanation, “I was thirsty.”

_Of course you were_ , thinks Makoto. Somehow, in Haru’s view of the world, this makes perfect sense; and in Makoto’s view of the world, there’s the kind of sense that other people make, and there’s the kind of sense that Haru makes. Even when he’s weirdly, lucidly, drunk.

Makoto tries saying it out loud, because who knows when he’ll get to say it again.

“You’re drunk.”

Haru, as he does, ignores this utterly. He stretches a languid hand out towards Makoto, no less graceful for his current state of being.

Makoto, out of instinct, reaches to take it.

Their fingers meet, and twine; a second too late, it occurs to Makoto that Haru’s noticed his bottle is missing, and was probably looking for it, and it’s kind of weird now. He can’t let go. That’ll make it even more awkward. And Haru’s not letting go either. In fact, he’s running a thumb across the back of Makoto’s knuckles, pressing palm into palm, hotly -

_What do I do?_

It’s not like they’ve never held hands, of course, but as Makoto feels his pulse quicken, he thinks that this may be the first time they’re holding hands with no discernable reason other than:  _Haru reached for me._

_No_ , Makoto tells himself, it’s because Haru’s drunk, and someone needs to -

“You’re. Makoto, you’re warm,” Haru mumbles, cutting off his thought abruptly. “You’re burning.”

“Haru, I think that - ”

“You have a fever,” Haru decides.

“I -  _what?_ ”

“We should go home. You need to rest.”

Makoto opens his mouth to protest, but Haru, with a superhuman effort, has already wrenched himself into a sitting position, and as Makoto takes a breath, Haru turns to him with an expression that makes it catch in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” says Haru. “I don’t think I can drive.”

Makoto, taken aback, starts to laugh. The feeling’s like champagne bubbling up from within. He wonders if he, too, is not high on something right now. He thinks that Haru is even more beautiful by moonlight.

“I’m not the one who needs looking after right now, Haru,” he points out gently.

Haru makes a disdainful noise that comes out somewhere between a snort and a sneeze. His familiar, comforting grip tightens around Makoto’s hand.

“Makoto. I’ll always look after you.”

_It’s the alcohol._  That’s Makoto’s first thought.  _Just the alcohol talking - that’s all -_

But perhaps, it’s not their waking hours, not Haru he needs to look at for the truth, it’s himself; his beating heart inside him right now, and everything it’s trying to say to him.


	7. makoharu: things you said when you were crying

The first time Haruka hears Makoto cry, he is not yet four months old, and Makoto is all of one week.

When Haruka’s mother walks up to his cradle and whispers,  _Haruka, this is Makoto,_  when they set eyes on each other, Makoto stops crying so he can stare in wonder instead.

They don’t remember this, of course.

 

* * *

 

The first time Haruka remembers hearing Makoto cry, it’s a postcard-perfect day with fluffy white clouds in the sky, shaped like fish. Makoto says they are shaped like elephants. Makoto is wrong.

They are three years old. Makoto has a pair of new shoes, because his feet are growing; that is what feet do at their age, Haruka tells him. He is older, and better at many things, so he has to wait impatiently by the doorstep as Makoto takes his time, fumbling with velcro straps that make a  _sssszzznnkt_  noise.

“Hurry up, Makoto,” says Haruka, tugging at his sleeve, and Makoto looks up at him, blinking sunlight out of his eyes.

Together, they run down the stairs. They are allowed to explore Misagozaki Shrine now, as long as they don’t go past the second  _torii_. Haruka likes washing his hands at the  _chouzuya_.

 _Makoto is younger, Haruka,_  his mother had said,  _so look out for him, okay?_

 _Okay,_  Haruka had said, solemnly.

But that was yesterday’s promise, and today, Makoto is being so  _slow_ , so Haruka runs ahead, and when Makoto misses a step, trips and falls -

Haruka isn’t looking.

He hears the cry.

He hears Makoto whimper,  _Haru-chan,_  just before he turns around.

 

* * *

 

Haruka learns all the different ways Makoto says his name.  _Haru-chan. Haruka. Nanase Haruka. Haru._

There is one way he never wants to hear again. He’s thankful, perversely perhaps, that he was out cold at the time, when he hears from Rin about what happened by the riverbank.

The sound of Makoto saying his name when he’s crying is the worst sound of all.

 

* * *

 

When Makoto doesn’t cry, even at the graduation ceremony, even when Rin leaves, Haruka starts to suspect -

That sometimes, Makoto’s holding back. This isn’t the Makoto he remembers, who cried at everything.

(Or, maybe, Makoto’s growing up, and doesn’t need Haruka to look out for him any more.)

 

* * *

 

It’s not the anguish, but Makoto’s final expression that burns itself into Haruka’s mind, like a dull, throbbing wound - that infinite calm, that resignation - that final _letting go…_

He turns to run, and Makoto calls his name -

“ _Haru!_ ”

And Haruka remembers, with a sudden jolt, what it sounds like when Makoto says his name this way, remembers a time when he wasn’t looking and Makoto needed him; wonders -

_Is Makoto crying, now?_

He keeps running. He doesn’t turn around to look.

He doesn’t know what he wants to see.


	8. kuroken: things you said after you kissed me

“I don’t think that was very good.”

Kuroo, caught by surprise, starts to laugh.

He smothers it in a hurry, because he knows Kenma will frown. Kenma frowns anyway. On his face, it’s a barely perceptible difference from his usual expression.

“ _Kuro_  - ”

“Kenma,” says Kuroo, “it was fine.”

He presses his lips together, softly; parts them again, just enough to draw a gentle breath, just enough for the recollection to tingle.

Beside him, Kenma’s retreating into himself. The shape he inscribes is precise, smaller than the space they share, the casual manner of their touches and the way that he exhales, so lightly, on Kuroo’s cheek. It is a shape that Kuroo knows well.

He longs to reach out. He does not.

“Kenma,” he murmurs, again.

Kenma’s gaze flicks upwards, warily, and Kuroo is struck anew by the watchfulness of him. It’s always a mistake to think that Kenma isn’t looking.

“I don’t know how to make it good,” says Kenma.

His arms tighten round his knees, and he presses his head down, till his forehead’s buried and his face is hidden behind a curtain of golden flyaways; Kuroo knows better than to push the strands aside. He knows, too, that he is careful, has made a habit of weighing his words. But around Kenma, he’s never been so restrained.

There’s never been a need to. Kenma’s seen him at his pushiest, his most selfish,  _self-serving_  -

_Come out and play, Kenma -_   
_It’ll become one of our most powerful special moves -_   
_Join the volleyball team -_

Kuroo shifts, uncomfortably.

_Don’t quit._

And Kenma, through it all, is still here. A constant heartbeat. Kuroo’s grown used to the sound of it, steady in his chest, in his veins; it mingles with his own, subtle and inseparable.

“This isn’t a game you have to win, you know,” Kuroo points out. “I’m not a final boss.”

“I  _know_  it’s not a game. That’s why it’s so hard.”

Beneath the muted strains of that quiet voice, Kuroo hears a familiar, mounting frustration, and he leans back, tries to settle down for both of them. The smell of Kenma’s bedsheets only reminds him of sleepovers and crushed blankets. Feet bumping in the night.

The windows in Kenma’s room are open. Summer hums in the air, hot, restless. Kuroo thinks about being outdoors with Kenma.

He thinks about Kenma, in his silences. He thinks about Kenma, a lot; will think about Kenma, as the years go by and in summers to come, and this is the moment that Kuroo will remember:

Kenma, curled up by his side, telling him that he is more than a game -

_When you beat the game, it’s over, isn’t it?_

He should have known that for them, there was never any chance of an ending.


	9. daisuga: things you said with too many miles between us

> _suga@FINALS WEEK!!! is typing…_

It’s a sight that Daichi gets to know well, those words.

The thing about Suga is: it’s strange, when he’s beyond reach like this. When Daichi does something dumb and braces himself for a punch in the gut, and it doesn’t come, it boils down to the simple fact that there’s something out of joint in the world.

_His_  world, he corrects himself; that’s Tokyo, now, skyscrapers, Shibuya scramble, and grab-and-go lunches from the Family Mart on the corner near his apartment, a one-bedroom the size of a shoebox. Everything moves so quickly. Daichi bumps into people. It’s hard not to.

Whenever someone brushes by him, he thinks of Suga, tactile and tangible.

He wonders when their worlds will collide again.

> _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: My essay is shit and I have no more coffee._   
>  _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: Daichi, I will actually die_   
>  _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: Goodbye, Daichi  
> _ _  
> ws_sawamura_: can you not_

He’s interrupted, just then, by the cheery  _ding!_  from his microwave. That’ll be dinner. Daichi rubs his eyes.  _10:02pm,_  blinks the clock on his bedstand. His stomach lets out a low rumble as he stands up and goes to the kitchen.

He thinks: if Suga knew he hadn’t eaten yet, he’d get such a scolding; if Suga knew he was having reheated spicy curry rice for dinner, he’d swoop down on it so fast there’d be barely half left over for Daichi.

The thing about Suga is: he makes Daichi feel safe and so very on edge, all at once.

> _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: Can I not what?_   
>  _ws_sawamura_: die_   
>  _ws_sawamura_: get dramatic on me_   
>  _ws_sawamura_: mostly get dramatic on me_   
>  _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: Ah, Daichi, I can always count on you to care…_

Here, on the other side of a screen, Daichi’s words are all he has. They feel clumsy as he types them one-handed, shovelling his food into his mouth with the other.

> _suga@FINALS WEEK!!! is typing…_

The line appears, then fades after a few seconds. Daichi chews on his potatoes. He takes a drink of water.

Suga is not typing. He’s stopped typing.

Daichi stares mindlessly at his screen.

These are the worst moments, these dead silences; he pictures Suga on the other end, in that bedroom of his back in Miyagi that Daichi knows so well. He’ll be frowning at his computer, deep in thought, brow scrunching, and maybe he’s wearing his cream-coloured sweater, the one that smells alternately of laundry and the gym room. Or maybe he’s gone to the toilet. Maybe he’s got a phone call. Maybe he’s fallen asleep. Maybe, maybe.

The possibilities are endless. There is so much he doesn’t know.

But there is so much, too, that he does; that he never would have without the miles between them, and Daichi’s emboldened, just a little, by the distance.

> _ws_sawamura_: yeah._   
>  _ws_sawamura_: glad you know that._

He takes a shallow breath in the quiet of the night, listens to the symphony of traffic on the street. What Suga hears is different. He knows that too, knows the cicadas of the countryside and the smell of the mountain air, and yet -

They are close.

They are closer, still.

> _ws_sawamura_: suga don’t you dare disappear you need to finish your essay_
> 
> _suga@FINALS WEEK!!! is typing…_

The thing about Suga, in all his complexity, is: there are an infinite number of things.

And Daichi will probably never know them all, distance or not; whether they’re a breath away - a fingertip apart - hours and hours by train -

But he’s always on the brink of knowing just a little bit more.

> _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: DON’T GET SCARY OKAY_   
>  _suga@FINALS WEEK!!!: I’m here ^^_

And at the memory of caramel eyes and a warm, wry smile, real enough to lose himself in, Daichi can believe that he actually is.


	10. makoharu: things you said through your teeth

Before his gaze, the stars fell to their knees.

They made skyfall at night, like they always did; cold, light years away from this universe. They did not revolve around him. He did not pretend they did. He did not want them to, even if others seemed to believe it.

 

* * *

 

“Look, Haru.”

Makoto pushes a newspaper across the dining table to him. It stops short on the edge of his breakfast plate.

“Your photo’s on the front page,” says Makoto, and he smiles, even as Haruka frowns.

“It looks so weird. I told them I didn’t want it so big.”

“Well…”

Makoto’s smile does that thing Haruka recognises, the one that makes his heart twist. It goes a little hard at the edges, a little more brittle, like the slightest touch will shatter it beautifully, just for a moment -

Haruka blinks.

When he opens his eyes to meet Makoto’s, they are gentle, and resigned.

“I guess your face will sell more papers, huh?”

Haruka tears off a bite-sized piece of  _saba shioyaki_  with his chopsticks. He puts it into his mouth. The pleasant drone of the NHK newsreader sounds from the living room behind them. Makoto’s bag, with his swimming gear in it, sits neatly packed next to his chair. He is ready to go to work, and Haruka is ready to go to his.

The reassuring normalcy of a life together, a young couple in Tokyo -

It’s so near. So close that on mornings like this, Haruka could believe it is theirs; it tastes like orange juice, and oversweetened coffee.

And then he sees his face on the front page of the newspaper, and it is impossible.

 

* * *

 

Before his gaze, the stars did not so much fall to their knees as rise, polish themselves to a greater shine and grow warmer, brighter.

There was never any question of how much power he truly wielded, if only one chose to see.

He did not always choose to see it himself.

 

* * *

 

“He did well in that competition, huh? Your friend. Nanase.”

Makoto, drying off his hair in the locker room, turns. He meets a look he knows well, from one of the other coaches; it is polite, just restrained enough to be within the bounds of social acceptability, just inquisitive enough to betray a burning curiosity.

Makoto is used to this. He smiles.

“Yeah. Haru’s coach was pretty happy with him.”

“Eh? His coach? What about  _him?_ ”

Makoto reaches for his bag. He lets his towel fall around his shoulders.

It’s a familiar scent, chlorine, citrus-flavoured shampoo and the laundry room at home; it’s a scent he’s grown up with, they’ve grown up with, and in the extraordinary, starlit nature of the life they share now, Makoto’s learned to hang on tight to little things like this. Things that remind him of what they were -  _are_  -

“I think… Haru’s someone who’ll never stop soaring forward.”

Because sometimes, he forgets.

Haru’s shadow is a long one to live in.

 

* * *

 

Before each other’s gaze, they froze.

Caught up in the inevitability of their orbit, the paths they took through the sky, the merest glimpse of of the other brought them to a breathtaking halt; and through gritted teeth, they bit off oaths and swore to vanquish the gulf that stood between them.


	11. kagehina: things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

“I need to talk to you!”

Kageyama almost drops his phone on his foot.

Osaka’s crisp, dry September presses in all around him, a late summer that tastes of  _takoyaki_  and sweat on his lips, and here, in the middle of a furious throng in the heart of the city, is a voice he hadn’t thought he’d ever hear again.

“Hi - ” he starts, at the same time as he hears Hinata blurt out, “It’s about Kageyama, I’m - ”

For one blissfully ignorant moment, Kageyama’s mind blanks out.

He hangs up.

Five minutes later, as he’s retrieving his change from the vending machine, the bitterness explodes in his mouth, and even the milk box does nothing to dispel it.

 

* * *

 

Of course he’d be a wrong number.

Number  _9_  and  _10_. They’re seared into his memory, and as numbers go, he’ll never look at them the same way again; he refuses jerseys of both those numbers, when he plays for his university team. It would feel wrong for him to wear  _10_. And he can’t wear  _9_  without his brilliant, erratic, endlessly frustrating number  _10_  by his side, the bane of his life, his collision, comet-like -

They couldn’t last, could they? They burnt too fast, too bright, and went out. A destructive accident of fate, numbers that shouldn’t have been.

_A wrong number._

He hears Hinata’s voice echo in his ears all the way from Miyagi, saying his name;  _Kageyama._

He wears the aftershocks of him on his skin, still.

 

* * *

 

When Kageyama gets home, he has five new messages from an unknown number.

He throws his phone on the kitchen counter, notifications unread, and goes to take a shower.

 

* * *

 

_From: ????????_  
_BAKA KAGEYAMA WHY DID YOU HANG UP_  
_…ok i guess it was. weird. im sorry._  
_i was trying to call kenma ur numbers are side by side in my phone_  
_i know its been a while. are u having fun in osaka???_  
  
_…call me?_

 

* * *

 

After an austere dinner of rice, salmon and soy sauce, Kageyama does his laundry and his ironing. He is precise and tidy. He finds solace in the mundanity of his routine.

In another time, Hinata wouldn’t have settled for texts. He’d have called him, been a relentless thorn in his side until Kageyama answered, and then chattered away nonstop till the sun rose.

He hasn’t the patience for this, not now -

Their volleyball days are past them. What will they speak of? What have they to say to each other, now, that they are meant to hear?

 

* * *

 

“I don’t think he wants to see me, Kenma.”

Later, Kageyama will question his senses, wonder what it was that struck him first:

The shock of orange hair. That voice, pealing clear and bright, like a bell; Kageyama thinks it would have carried to him, no matter how far apart they were. The black Karasuno jacket. Hinata still wears it.  _He hasn’t grown._ Glasses. Those are new.

On one end of the bridge that crosses the Dotonbori River, his footsteps come to a standstill.

“ _Yeah_ , I know, but… no, he doesn’t know I moved here… it  _was_  my fault we fell out of touch.”

 _Was it?_  Kageyama wonders, and thinks about what everyone says. Things change, once you’re out of high school and you don’t see each other any more. People change. Did they change? Whose fault  _was_  it?

_Was it anyone’s?_

Those are questions for later - later, in the safety of his solitude -

In this time, Kageyama turns on his heel. He walks away with his head down.

He fingers his phone through his pocket, and dares to think of possibilities.


	12. nagirei: things you didn't say at all

“Hey. Don’t come to the airport tomorrow, okay?”

Nagisa’s head whips round.

The train chooses that very moment to go over the tracks extra loudly.

Outside, the rice fields pass in a blur of spring-green and sunlight, blinding, and Nagisa blinks; he thinks that maybe his  _Rei-chan?_  got lost in that rumble, but Rei looks down, looks away for a second.

 _Oh,_  thinks Nagisa.  _He heard me._

Rei’s gaze settles, rigid, beyond the window, somewhere on the gold-tinged horizon in the distance. He doesn’t say anything.

“Rei-chan?” Nagisa prompts, nudging his best friend in the side.

“It’s just,” Rei starts, and stops awkardly. “It’s not beautiful - ”

Nagisa wags a finger at him in mock disapproval. “The airport’s not  _that_  ugly, Rei-chan!”

“Not the  _airport_!” Rei retorts. The strident tones of his raised voice warm the very cockles of Nagisa’s heart.

“I’m not that ugly, either,” he adds, with a small pout.

Rei huffs out a sigh abruptly. He’s starting to crack a grin, and something in Nagisa sings with relief; he hides his own behind a pert toss of his head and crossed arms. It won’t do to be seen through. Not that that lasts long anyway, because Rei always sees through him in 0.02 seconds flat.

So Nagisa abandons the pretense, turns the full force of his smile onto Rei. He stretches his arms overhead, his legs in the empty aisle, so he’s kind of hanging out all gangly in the seat, and one elbow nearly whacks Rei in the face but for the other boy’s quick reflexes.

With one hand, Rei swats Nagisa’s arm aside and says, “It’s the whole  _farewell_ thing.”

Nagisa stares at him. “Huh?”

“You know,” Rei mutters. “I’ll cry. And you will too. It’s not beautiful.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” says Nagisa, eyes going wide.

“I know,” says Rei, with a smile that hovers at that sweet spot Nagisa knows well, an angle that marks out the precise space between  _fondness_  and _exasperation_.

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed too, Rei-chan, it won’t be the first time I - ”

“I know that too,” Rei cuts him off, cheeks pinking. “But I don’t want you to come anyway.”

Nagisa feels his breath catch like a pang, opens his mouth to say, with all the calm he can summon,  _Rei-chan_ , because this isn’t a moment for wailing, it’s a moment for words and honesty. But then the train slows, and he’s interrupted by the sound of the bell and the conductor’s muffled voice crackling through the carriage.

Rei stands. He pushes up his glasses.

He looks back to meet Nagisa’s gaze, and holds it for the second before the doors open.

Violet,  _amethyst_ , cobalt on a dark day: Nagisa’s never quite been able to decide what colour Rei’s eyes are, and those lenses don’t help; today, he thinks they are the colour of something reflected in water, a purpling sunset, or, maybe, a sunrise - like a new beginning -

“Because I don’t want to say bye to you. I’ll definitely see you again, Nagisa.”

And as he turns and gets off the train they share for the last time, Nagisa hears what Rei didn’t say, hears his name ring loud and clear, deliberate and complete in his ears.  _Nagisa. Nagisa._

He tries the sound of it out for himself.

“Rei,” he whispers, under his breath, and everything tingles.


	13. adam/ronan: things you said when you were crying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s set very specifically towards the end of TRB, in a certain pocket of time behind the scenes, and was inspired by this line from when Gansey picks Adam up outside the hospital:
> 
> _“When he sucked in his breath, it was the ragged sound that came from trying not to cry.”_

When Adam shut the door behind him, he did it quietly, like he did everything else. One hand tightened round the doorknob. His fingers curled with a careful, hostile delicacy; it made Ronan shiver to see, it made the knuckles of Adam’s hand turn white.

Ronan, still standing, dropped the duffel and backpack on the floor with a deliberate  _thump_.

He let the sound of it seep into their bones. He let the pristine, suffocating space of Noah’s room coil around them. Noah never opened any windows. The air was stifling, sticky warm in the late afternoon’s heat, and Adam’s face was flushed.

He was unscarred, except for the tinge of red by his ear. He looked ghastly. He looked even worse than when there were visible bruises on him.

Those, at least, Ronan could justify in the cause-and-effect laws of this cruel universe; you got hit, it left the marks on your skin. Those were ugly, but they healed. When the marks were invisible ones, worn on the inside, dark tattoos etched in something that ran thicker than blood, there was nothing anyone could do.

Ronan put his hands in his pockets and slouched against the far wall.

“Thanks for carrying my stuff. Why are you still here?” Adam muttered.

Ronan gave him a hard, level stare. “Why are  _you_  fighting with Gansey?”

Adam’s shoulders sagged. He drew a long, unsteady breath. Framed in the doorway, his entire body seemed to shake.

 _Shit,_  thought Ronan.

“Sit,” he ordered, and when Adam did not, he said, “Sit the  _fuck down_ , Parrish.”

This time, Adam sat.

He crossed the room, balanced precariously on the edge of the bed, put his Froot Loops box on his lap and jammed the heels of his palms into his eyes, shoulders heaving.

Something in Ronan vibrated, so intense and visceral it was hard to hold himself still. He could not reach out and touch. He could not say a thing. Not now. At the slightest sign of his sympathy, his unwanted pity, Adam would bolt, and it would all be truly over.

So Ronan closed his eyes, and listened to Adam let out everything he’d been holding in.

Ronan knew the sound of a person dying. He had heard it. He had dreamt it a thousand times over. He was not dramatic enough, nor reckless, to say this was worse, but the place it cut him was different, and it sliced through a part of Ronan that he had never known existed; it made a beautiful and terrible wound in the depths of his chest, and Ronan felt something inside him come alive, awake.

“Damn Gansey,” was all Adam said, finally. “And damn  _you_ , Ronan.”

Ronan counted his breaths. He waited till he lost count to open his eyes.

“I’m fucked,” he said, breaking the silence.

Adam looked up. Ronan turned to meet his gaze.

“I spent all afternoon studying, and I still don’t know how I’ll pass these shitty exams.”

“If you fail them, I’ll never forgive you,” said Adam, lips pressed together in a thin line. Through the fading sheen of tears, his blue eyes shone like steel, more fiercely than before.

“ _You!_ ” Ronan laughed. “What about Gansey?”

“Damn Gansey,” said Adam again, with a passion.

Ronan peeled himself off the wall, one shoulderblade at a time. He straightened, and rubbed one palm against the back of his aching neck.

“We should go out,” he said. “Gansey might decide to barge in here.”

He looked at Adam again.

He did not ask if Adam was okay. Adam did not volunteer the information. He set down his cereal box, quietly; he stood up, took one single, deep breath, and led the way.

Ronan followed, one watchful eye on Adam’s shadow.


	14. sourin: things you said when you thought i was asleep

It’s almost hilariously easy to fool Rin. From beneath one eyelid, cracked open just a tiny fraction, Sousuke presses his face into his pillow, watches Rin step quietly so as not to wake him. His towel’s round his shoulders, hair still dripping.

“ _Shit_ ,” Rin hisses in the dark, as he stubs a toe on the foot of the bunk bed. He claps his hand over his mouth and shoots a glance up at Sousuke.

Sousuke shifts, and keeps breathing.

So does Rin, after a second; he exhales more noisily than he swore, sits down at his desk and switches on the table lamp.

Sousuke keeps his silent vigil as Rin picks up a pencil and opens a textbook. In the half-light, the sharp lines of his jaw are thrown into stark relief. He looks paler. Shadows under his eyes. Rin doesn’t sleep enough, never has.

 _You sleep too much,_  he tells Sousuke, all the time; he laughs and they laugh and that’s why it’s hilariously easy - though, in fairness -

Rin’s no fool, not really, but what he is is sentimental, and sentimentality means memory. When they ran barefoot by the sea, children of the crashing waves, Rin would take off like a firecracker at the speed of light. Sousuke would follow, sand between his toes; when Rin looked back, it was always rose-tinted. _Everything._  Even Sousuke.

From the first fistbump to the last cola, their  _jan-ken-pon_  and secret handshakes, everything about their reunion is a throwback built on nostalgia, and Sousuke’s dimly aware that there’s a part of who he used to be that’s stirring, dangerously, because this is what Rin  _remembers_  him to be -

Driven. Hardworking. Serious, serious and intense, someone with goals…

He hears vibrations from Rin’s table, hears Rin picks up his phone and murmur a soft “yeah?” under his breath.

“Gou. What’s up? I can’t really talk, Sousuke’s sleeping… yeah, he still sleeps so early… yeah, like a rock, it’s okay for a short while. Nothing will wake him up once he’s breathing like this.”

In the safety of the dark, Sousuke permits himself a small smile.

One day, he knows, he’ll have to tell Rin about Tokyo. About his breakdown, his insomnia, the hours he spent waiting for dawn on his own. About the way his mind was filled with visions, visions of red hair and an irrepressible grin, on a stage beyond his reach.

Today is not that day.

Tonight, at least, he can let Rin go on believing he sleeps well at night.


	15. iwaoi: things you said that i wish you hadn't

“I’m not afraid of anything,” says Oikawa Tooru. “Even geniuses.”

Iwaizumi Hajime hitches his bag up on his shoulder, grunts indistinctly in response and jams one hand further down into his pocket. His jacket’s zipped up tight against the sudden chill of late spring. Oikawa’s not even wearing his. _Typical._  Reckless.

This is not a story about fear.

/

Oikawa flops onto his back, stares at the ceiling and sighs. The sound of it reverberates off the walls of Iwaizumi’s room like some strange music.

“Iwa- _chan_. Do this math for me. I can’t sit here anymore like this.”

Iwaizumi throws an eraser at Oikawa’s head. “Do it yourself. Your math is better than mine.”

“I’m bored,” Oikawa repeats. “Let me toss for you.”

Iwaizumi knows that tone all too well. There is a mania in it that unnerves him sometimes, and Oikawa’s hand, resting on his forehead palm-up, is pale and restless, fingers flexing like they ache for the feel of a volleyball.

“No. You’ve overworked yourself at practice already,” says Iwaizumi firmly.

“I  _haven’t_ ,” Oikawa insists.

This is not a story about obsession.

/

The day after Iwaizumi bodily yanks Oikawa from the brink of certain regret, if not disciplinary action, Oikawa acts like nothing happened. There’s still a bit of purpling round his nose, and he says, breezily, when anyone asks, “Iwa-chan headbutted me! He’s so mean!”

_All of a sudden, I feel invincible._

It’s so like Oikawa. To throw out lines like that when Iwaizumi’s unprepared for them. To make him stay up at night, questioning what he’s come to think of as Oikawa’s endemic insincerity.

From across the court, Oikawa shoots him a bright, sudden smile. It makes Iwaizumi want to smile back and flip him off at the same time. He settles for neither.

This is not a story about violence.

/

Oikawa, pausing meditatively halfway through his  _nikuman_ , says, “I was wrong.”

Iwaizumi’s eyebrows shoot up before he can help it. This, he thinks, is a historic occasion.

“Say that again so I can record it,” he says, reaching for his phone.

Oikawa pouts. “You’re so mean, Iwa-chan. I was going to say, I was wrong about not being afraid of anything, you know?”

“You’re afraid of Kageyama,” Iwaizumi says.

Oikawa shakes his head. “No. I’m afraid… of  _you_. Iwa-chan, I - without you, I don’t know what I’ll - ”

Iwaizumi socks him in the shoulder. It’s half-hearted, but Oikawa yelps anyway. “Shut the fuck up, dumbass.”

To his surprise, Oikawa does.

He finishes his  _nikuman_  in silence. They walk on, down the hill that leads to their quiet neighbourhood by the riverside. Iwaizumi reaches for his hand. He holds it tight all the way to Oikawa’s doorstep.

The next day, they graduate.

This is not a story about confessions.

/

When Iwaizumi turns on the TV and flicks to the sports channel, there’s only one face he’s looking for, and perhaps, now, he’ll even admit it. He’s still a favourite in post-match interviews. The cameras love him. They love him even more with a gold medal round his chest.

With a smile that reaches through the screen to crack Iwaizumi’s heart, Oikawa Tooru says, “This is the happiest moment of my life.”

This is not a story about the truth.


	16. makorin: things you said that made me feel like shit

There’s no way Makoto knows the power he has.

That’s what Rin thought, in their younger days, under the sprawling shadow of their schoolyard’s trees; still thinks now, sometimes.

And then there are times when he catches a glint in Makoto’s eye, a certain lilt to his voice, and he thinks:  _no_ , he really, really does.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know if I ever told you this, but…”

Rin’s voice trails off, for a moment. Makoto’s by his side, hands around a takeaway cup of hot coffee; as they cross the carpark outside the swimming club, they’re distracted by a parent and her child vigorously waving  _bye_  to Makoto. He smiles and waves back.

It’s fairly modest, the club where Makoto works. Having Team Japan Olympic swimmer, Matsuoka Rin, visit as a guest coach for the afternoon is the biggest event they’ve ever had.

( _The manager’s still starstruck_ , Makoto tells Rin laughingly.

Rin’s used to that by now, but having Makoto tease him about it is another thing altogether, and he’s horrified to find himself growing warm, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.)

“Sorry,” says Makoto, turning back. “You were saying something?”

Rin’s footsteps slow. He jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and looks up at the setting sun in the distance. It casts dappled shadows through the leaves, shadows that dance across the side of Makoto’s face.

“I wouldn’t be here without you,” says Rin.

 

* * *

 

When Rin swims, the taste of chlorine in his mouth burns like victory.

He never understood this, not until he’d tasted defeat, and that was bitter; and defeat came not in the way he thought it would, not in the pool but in the corridors behind the spotlights of the stadium, their glory and their stage.

And defeat was this -

_(What else matters in swimming, other than winning?_  
_There is more - at least, Haru thought so -_

_And I’m sure the one who taught him that was you, Rin.)_

\- the systematic destruction of the puffed-up lie he’d made of himself.

 

* * *

 

The pieces of himself are glass shards and barbed wire, a siren’s song. They cut his bare hands into ribbons when he tries to pick them up.

He knows Makoto never handled him with kid gloves, and this, Rin comes to realise, is the full force of his compassion; it is brutal, and honest.

Perhaps the most honest that he’s ever seen Makoto be.

 

* * *

 

The air smells like a city summer. Strangely enough, it warms Rin’s heart; exhaust and concrete and cut grass, sticky on his skin like it was years ago, the last time they raced each other in this city.

He pauses for a breath. Makoto’s eyes widen.

Rin had predicted that.

He doesn’t say anything.

Rin had not predicted that. Yet, on hindsight, it doesn’t surprise. Makoto hides himself best in his silences, after all.

“I just wanted to tell you that,” he finishes.

Makoto smiles. The tilt of his head is as knowing as his gaze is gentle.

“I didn’t do anything,” says Makoto.

Rin snorts, and shoots him an exasperated smirk. “Yeah, right. You  _always_ knew what you were doing when you made me feel like shit.”

The look of genuine affront on Makoto’s face makes Rin laugh. It’s like something coming uncorked, sunlight warming the solid ground, and he can admit the truth to Makoto  _because_  it’s Makoto -

“The thing is,” he says, “I like you best this way.”


	17. sourin: things you said when you were drunk

“What did I say last night?”

Sousuke exhales, watches his breath dissipate like smoke on the winter air. They walk a road they’ve walked a thousand times before. The chill wraps around them like a chrysalis, fog-stained and secret, deliberate in its silences.

Rin shoots him a look that strains to snap into icicles.

“Nothing,” says Sousuke, stuffing his gloved hands deeper into his pockets.

He’s waited too long. He knows it the moment he speaks. Rin can read his hesitation even better than he reads his words.

“Bullshit,” says Rin.

He is calm, and that’s what sets Sousuke on edge.

“You were  _drunk_.”

“So?”

Sousuke grits his teeth. Looks away, across the road. The night is unforgiving, and it bites into his shoulder; every part of him aches.

“People say a lot of things when they’re drunk,” Sousuke says eventually.

They pass by an alleyway with a vending machine. Hazy street lights cast shadows around the corner, around the shape of the recycling bins, and Rin’s footsteps come to an abrupt stop. He’s not looking at Sousuke.

“I need a drink,” says Rin. His voice is parched as sandpaper.

When he buys his can of Pocari Sweat, he doesn’t offer one to Sousuke.

He leans back against the wall. Rests the heel of one foot on the kerb, lowers the hood on his jacket; his red hair’s startling against the ash-grey concrete, and he is sober, soberingly present, here and now as he cracks the can open and takes a long sip.

Sousuke waits. Watches. As he does. His breath tightens in his chest like a vise.

“I remember,” says Rin. His hand falls to his side, gaze finding Sousuke’s in the dark of the alley, and Sousuke’s eyes narrow.

“I remember,” says Rin again, like Sousuke didn’t hear it the first time. “What I said.”

Sousuke clenches one hand into a fist. “You  _can’t_. How? You were so drunk. I had to drag you home.”

Rin breathes. The sound’s like an intoxicating hush, a whisper just for Sousuke’s ears.

“I’ve always been a very lucid drunk,” he says.

He is calm, and Sousuke -

Sousuke steps closer, the better to see the smirk on Rin’s face.

He presses one hand to the wall, leans in close so he can catch the shiver on those fine, cold-stung lips, the way one corner curls upwards. In the dead of their small-town winter, Rin is scorching. Sousuke feels the heat uncoil from the pit of his belly.

“Then say it again. I dare you.”

Rin smiles, sharp as a razor blade.

He says it again.


	18. rinharu: things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

Their hands were tinted red.

Rin, at his side, laughed in delight and stretched his arm out, onwards and upwards. He closed his fingers around the sun in the sky, and held on tight.

“Look,” he said. “Haru, have you ever seen a sunset like that?”

_Yes,_  Haruka wanted to say.  _Many times._  And he had, because there was no sight, truly, like dusk at the top of the stone steps outside his home, but then Rin smiled, and he could not say anything at all.

So he raised one upturned palm, watched the crimson light dance in the crease of his heart line and thought of how impossible it was to trap the sun.

Rin’s inhale was sharp, salt-tinged.

"Man, it really brings me back.”

Haruka did not need to ask for the details of his nostalgia. He had learned it. He had lived it. He saw it himself in Rin’s eyes still, every time he put up the window shade on a plane, and gazed out into the clouds.

The water lapping at their feet was warm, warmer than it looked; Haruka let this delayed summer seep into his toes, between the grains of sand, the whispering waves.

“One time,” said Rin, “I came here after practice and threw my goggles into the sea. I was so frustrated. It was a sunset just like this. And then I sat down in the sand, right here, and tried to write a letter to calm down…”

He kicked one foot lightly, jumped back out of the way of the seafoam.

Haruka stayed where he was, sinking deeper.

“Who did you write to?” he asked, and when Rin paused, shot him a look that grazed his cheek like the hot sea breeze, looked away, Haruka knew.

“Sousuke,” said Rin.

_Me,_  thought Haruka.

He pressed his lips together. His hesitation tasted like water-based lip balm and the barest hint of sweat, like the carbonated sports drink Rin had bought for him earlier, and then it tasted like the vivid memory of bamboo shoots and butterburs.

He could tell Rin what he’d learned, years ago in his living room. They had been eating croquettes and practising  _karuta_  grabbing. It never ceased to amaze Haruka, what he remembered long after the fact.

He still remembered, too, the exact spot on the train line where he’d stood when he caught sight of Rin that day.

Rin laughed again, and the sound of it danced daringly on the wind.

“I didn’t really write to anyone else, back then. I didn’t know what to say to you.”

_No. You did, I know you did - even though I wasn’t meant to hear it -_

_Rin -_

Haruka opened his mouth. The words threatened to spill forth from the tip of his tongue.

He closed it.

They were unexpectedly sweet in the swallowing.

“You still don’t,” said Haruka. “But you’re better at it now.”

Rin’s smile flashed across his face, and it was red, too, more vivid than the dying light, red like their hands, linked by more than shadows of the past.

“I guess I am,” he said.


	19. shunuki: things you said that i wish you hadn't

He glimpsed him in the corridors of the academy. He wore his hair short, then, and it was then, too, that he developed his taste for tea.

He glimpsed him in passing, the hem of his  _hakama_  whipping past the doorways, swift as the wind. He was always running after some girl or another.

Juushirou, not a runner himself, knelt on the tatami mats and let the smoky scent of  _houjicha_  fill the room. They were young. So was the world, in those days.

Juushirou kept count of their passing, because every day was one more he had cheated death, and oblivion, though here in Soul Society, the truth was that living was its own kind of eternity.

He was more acutely aware of it than most. The endless years that stretched before them, and everything was made more meaningful and meaningless all at once; he smiled at the friends that flocked to him and his easygoing manner, and he laughed, and he glimpsed him, the boy who outranked him in nobility and strength.

 _Must be nice,_  he thought wistfully.

He helped the gardener trim the bonsai round the perimeter, coughed to himself in the dark and kept the red-stained sleeves of his uniform out of sight.  _White._ He thought of growing his hair long.

The whispers started when the class put away the wooden swords and revealed, for the first time, their  _zanpakutou_ , and how could they  _not_  react, all the others - how could they, at a sight so unheard of that even Yamamoto, for a moment, raised his eyebrows in the most imperceptible way -

One twinned  _zanpakutou_  was a rarity; two, fate.

Juushirou’s hands were steady, steady from pouring tea, from hours of holding the garden shears  _just_  so, and it was a blessing because he would have shaken then, and the tremors would have found their way into his gut.

The boy did not hesitate. His steps were sure, his swordplay fluid. He smiled.

He smiled for Juushirou.

And it was different, Juushirou knew, from the smiles he had seen in those glimpses; beneath those lazy, hooded eyes, his gaze swept past Juushirou’s like a faint, lingering gust of wind. Elusive. Impossible to tame.

He let Juushirou see a part of him that he kept hidden from everyone else.

Juushirou tightened his grip on the hilts of both swords, thought of things that he kept secret, and thought: he could not risk getting closer, tearing down the walls - causing pain and trouble to anyone else but himself -

Yamamoto gave the signal.

The scrape of sandals on the hardwood floor was the only warning Juushirou had.

In a flurry of motion, sudden as a hurricane, blade met blade. The red chain flew, a ribbon like blood filling Juushirou’s sight, and between their crossed _katana_ , the boy leaned closer. He smiled again.

“I’m Kyouraku Shunsui,” he said. “Looks like we’ll be partners. I hope we’ll be friends, too.”

There was something in his voice that made Juushirou wish he hadn’t said it, not out loud, not like this in a low, rasping breath that left the gentlest scratch marks on Juushirou’s pale skin, that seemed to reach into his very heart and the space where his lungs should be, drawing him out of his hiding places.

And Juushirou thought,  _you can’t run from fate_.


	20. nagirei: things you said when i was crying

This was what he remembered, after the fact:

The promise of summer, sweet and sticky on his skin; the lights on the river, bursts of brilliance that blinded him at that time. He could not look directly at the water’s surface. He could not look directly at his friends, at once brighter and half-shadowed, already receding down the distant valley of tomorrow’s sunrise.

The humid breeze kissed the tears from his cheek like a benediction.

And there was something about the dusky evening, something about the sound of their shuffling footsteps on the boardwalk and their reminiscences that felt like prayer. The railing was cool beneath his grasp. He remembered holding on tight, letting go, as he raised his hands to his face, took off his glasses and hid behind a cupped palm. Salt, hot on his fingers.

This much, he could dedicate. This much, he could offer as a ritual. Speaking the words out loud, admitting a truth they had seen coming from a mile away. Letting them go as they left his lips.

_How odd,_  he had said.

And he remembered most vividly that when he wept, there was no comfort to be had from the boy by his side, only -

Solidarity.

A heart worn on the outside, fragile on that thin cotton sleeve,  _orange_ , like every other part of him. So dazzling. So mesmerising. Tears that joined his in the crying, words that mingled with his own voice, so that he didn’t know where one sentiment ended, and where the other began.

He carried this remembrance with him, cracked and imperfect round the edges.

It was not pleasing to dwell on. It lacked symmetry, dignity; and he kept it hidden, tucked away where only the two of them, of everyone left in Iwatobi, could see it.

This was what he remembered, the day he stepped down as captain:

Nagisa would be by his side again, and he would say things, things meant for the team to hear, and then later - in the shadowy privacy of a stairwell, a quiet train platform, the foot of a deserted bridge, perhaps - things that were meant only for him.

And their choked up words would collide, once again, grope their way to each other on still air that smelled like the salt of the ocean. The earth would shift beneath their feet. He would not console, he would not tell Rei that things were going to be okay -

But in the tender press of their foreheads and his stark honesty, he would make Rei feel less alone.

Nostalgia only hurt if he chose to let it.


	21. kisurin: things you said with no space between us

Everything about Rin is breathless.

Kisumi, soaked, stands by and watches; Rin’s always been like this, a whirlwind that dogged his footsteps -  _no_ , thinks Kisumi, it’s the other way round -

“Hmm. I think this one should fit you.”

Rin straightens, shakes out a plain black t-shirt and makes an abortive attempt at smoothing out barely perceptible wrinkles in the fabric.

He moves, not with grace but in sharp lines that slice through the space between them, what little there is of it. His hair is dark red in the dying light that spills through the window, and Kisumi, silenced out of his laughter, can’t even keep himself from admitting this truth in the back of his mind, what he’d tried to hide for so long.

In chasing Rin, he’d looked to the sky and forgotten how to breathe, in the thin air of the stratosphere.

He’s standing in the middle of the room, next to Rin’s bunk. He can tell which is whose without asking because Rin’s is made and neat as a pin, and Sousuke’s bunk, on top, is a rumpled mess of sheets, headphones peeking out over the edge.

He leans easily against the bedpost, shifts back on his heels. It’s all in the posture, his insouciance, his cleverness, and his shoulders slouch, just a little. He’s grown up taller than Rin, but slighter. He thinks Rin could pick him up if he tried. He thinks they have changed, the two of them.

“I think my torso’s a little bit longer than yours,” he says, raising one eloquent eyebrow.

Rin steps swiftly. He crosses the room, closes the distance that separates them.

He isn’t afraid of touch.

He doesn’t know, in that moment, if he means himself or of Rin.

There should be  _danger_  signs flashing in his head at the proximity of Rin, but for the fact that Rin, himself, has always been a walking, rushing  _danger_  sign, has always set his pulse racing, and Kisumi cannot tell the difference any more, cannot put his finger on the way that he swallows when Rin lays a hand on his wet collar.

“Let’s get this off you,” Rin says, with a smile that tears sparks into Kisumi’s skin. “Then we’ll see.”

Kisumi licks his lips. 

The traces of whipped cream are faint, fresh on his tongue; they are sweeter than strawberries, and they dissipate like Rin does, always.

Before he has time to even miss him. Before he can do the world, his friends and family, the common courtesy of a  _goodbye_  and a slow fade, he’s gone when the morning comes. On the next plane, the next train out of town, out of country. Like the wind.

_Breathless -_

Rin drapes the black t-shirt on the back of his chair, and steps closer still. He raises his other hand. Undoes the first button on Kisumi’s shirt, then the next.

“Don’t say a thing,” says Rin, and he’s  _here_ , now, he’s not going anywhere -

So Kisumi doesn’t.


	22. kisumako: things you said when you were scared

_(i)_

Makoto doesn’t remember what he said, then. Only his smile, eager and full of promise, and the way that his voice sounded when he called his name from the doorway,  _Tachibana-kun -_

His voice was high, then, higher still than it is now.

What he remembers is the weight of the basketball in his hands, and of Kisumi’s arm around his shoulder.

 

_(ii)_

“Makoto…?”

And this time, he’s got all his wits about him, enough to catch the way that the dusk falls in his hair through the glass, to think that the fine, flyaway strands became even more like spun silk when he wasn’t looking. They curl round his lightly blushing face and the nape of his neck. He wears his tie loose, collar unbuttoned.

Makoto watches those jewel-bright eyes soften as they meet his gaze.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you since middle school,” says Kisumi.

Around Hayato’s shoulders, his long, elegant fingers shift, grip tighter for a second. When Makoto looks again, they seem as relaxed as they ever were.

 

_(iii)_

Makoto sees him when they walk out to the starting blocks.

He is first in line, and he has the best view of the stands; he sees Hayato first because he’s on his tiptoes waving excitedly down at him, and Makoto smiles and waves back.

Next to his younger brother, Kisumi beams.

He doesn’t say anything at all, not this time, or maybe he does and Makoto doesn’t hear it, can’t hear it because they are separated by crowds and distance and two lengths of a pool. One length of destiny - or coincidence.

As he snaps on his goggles and steps up, he thinks that he sees Kisumi’s lips part, his cheeks pinking, but maybe it’s just a trick of the floodlights.

 

_(iv)_

“I’ve always admired you,” Makoto admits.

Tokyo was where they’d last met, without words, and Tokyo seems fitting for their reunion.

So, too, does the season. Makoto surprises himself with the thought. Kisumi’s always been springtime, to him; the rustling of grass in the wind, the sun on his back through a sky full of cumulus clouds.

But it’s a different kind of warmth he feels now, wrapped in scarves and a thick woollen coat with his hands around a coffee cup, and Kisumi laughs like tinkling bells.

“Why?”

“You were always so fearless,” says Makoto, smiling. “With total strangers. With your friends.”

Kisumi’s eyes dance.

“Ah, Makoto…”

He pauses, and sighs; the sound drifts away on the chatter of the city, the hum of traffic around them. “You’re so good at reading people. But you’re wrong, this time.”

Makoto, cup half-raised to his lips, hesitates.

Kisumi’s footsteps slow to a halt.

They are beneath a tree, bare branches adorned with fairy lights in blue, and Omotesando is lit up like an ethereal wonderland. Kisumi has never seemed more beautiful and more unreachable all at once, like a prince from a Christmas fairytale, tall and graceful.

Then he takes a step forward. Closes his hands round Makoto’s, lowers the paper cup, and Makoto feels them warm, trembling,  _real_.

“There’s one thing I’ve always been scared to confess,” Kisumi breathes.


	23. makoharu: things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

_Makoto -_

_How long have you been standing there?_

And Makoto doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t take another step in Haruka’s direction; he clasps his hands behind his back and keeps his gaze forward, forward, relentlessly and always, like he’s learned.

Yesterday cannot hurt him, hurt them.

The stone is fresh, cold to the touch. Makoto feels this through Haruka’s fingertips.

 

* * *

 

The thing about  _them_  is -

There is nowhere to hide, and that is their salvation, and their condemnation.

 

* * *

 

“Haru-chan?”

“…”

“Will you push me?”

“You can kick yourself off the ground, Makoto. Like this.”

“I know, but I always fly higher when Haru-chan’s at my back.”

“…”

 

* * *

 

His voice is high and childish, even to his ears, and Haruka’s words can be harsh, but he is soft like the hollow sound the wind makes in the doorway. They are careless. One of them, at least, is fearless, and Makoto loves him all the more for it.

The sky is vast and blue, like the ocean.

The ocean is deep, deep and endless, and when Makoto reaches out, he fears what he will touch on the other side.

It calls his name in his dreams, haunting, insistent.

When it’s Haruka pushing him, he thinks that he is not afraid after all.

 

* * *

 

_Makoto -_

“Haru?”

_don’t -_

“…go home,” says Haruka, and his voice is broken neatly down the centre like a crack, perfect and complete, two halves of a porcelain whole that he has taken apart with beautiful determination.

Makoto stands irresolute in the corridor. He pauses, caught in a half-turn.

_Haru -_

The smell of incense fills the air.

 

* * *

 

The thing about  _them_  is -

They changed, as they grew up, and they changed with the sea and the seasons, although the mountain stayed constant.

The boys of that evening tide turned around, walked away from the shore and let their footprints be erased.

Their minds say one thing, now, and their mouths another, and they do not know which it is they were meant to hear, and which not -

 

* * *

 

Or rather, the thing is, they  _do_.

It’s just that it’s hard to believe, sometimes, that their voices give out the lie.

 

* * *

 

They are careful, now. Neither of them are fearless.

Standing behind Haruka at his grandmother’s grave, Makoto hears it all without words.

And he loves him all the more for it.


	24. iwaoi: things you said when you were scared

It’s bullshit, Oikawa knows. This whole  _shoot for the moon, land among the stars_  thing: it’s a lie that people comfort themselves with when they fall, and he made a resolution in the depths of the storage closet, alone with the volleyballs and the smell of sweat, worn out laces between the knuckle-tight grip of his fingers.

He will not lie to himself.

He already lies to everyone else.

He’s okay with that. He’s never pretended to be pure and truthful, not like that; beneath the glamour and the easy way he tosses his head, lets his fine, long lashes flutter, his brutality is ugly, and he turns the worst of it inwards.

The chatter that trails out of the gym is soft, but still spirited. Evening’s chill sneaks in through cracks in the wall, the rafters of the ceiling, and it wraps around Oikawa, around his knees. He leans against a wall, tips his head back and does ankle rotations with his eyes closed.

Through his heavy lids, the white lights are blinding.

_I’m staying late. Don’t wait for me._

He flashes Iwaizumi a smile that drowns the sky in midnight blue. Shuts the door behind him.

It makes a sound that vibrates in his bones.  _Thud._  Like a ball hitting the floor. _Thud._  Like the rhythm in his chest, pounding, pounding, hard and heated, and he’ll tear himself right out of his skin with the urgency of it, he’ll grip the ball tighter, throw it faster, faster still.

His sneakers make screeching, skidding sounds as he moves across the court. He does not shoot for the moon. It is merely, after all, a satellite, and human beings can gaze upon it, contemplate its beauty.

That’s not for him - for him, the thirst of an Icarus, reaching for  _more_  -

His fingertips burn.

He falls to one knee, and then another, and  _thud_ , that dreaded noise. He grits his teeth. Clenches his fists on the hard floor -

Sees, from the corner of his reddened eyes, a familiar foot come into view, kick the ball away. Hard.

He’s angry.  _Iwa-chan._

_Oikawa! Pull yourself together!_

He smiles wanly.

Of course, Iwa-chan would wait for him anyway. Of course, he’d have been there all along, and Oikawa, in his selfishness, wouldn’t even have noticed him come back into the gym to watch. He feels them running all along his body like scars, he jagged, uneven tears in his paper-thin facade.

He’s angry, thinks Oikawa, and then,  _no, it’s more than that._

He knows this as resolutely as he does that he might never reach the sun, but he’ll sure as hell die trying, or, he’ll lose like this -

With Iwaizumi’s hands round the tender spot on his knee, so gentle, even though his gaze could set Oikawa alight right now, even though his words are harsh.  _What were you thinking, use your brain, you dumbass!_

And Oikawa thinks, if there’s one thing that’ll keep him from his self-destruction -

It is Iwaizumi’s hands, shaking like this.


	25. kisurin: things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

Kisumi tucks a flower behind his ear, in between strands of summer red, and the bow he makes is sweeping, exaggerated.

“My princess - ”

And Rin says, punching his shoulder,  _who’s your princess, idiot_ , but he’s laughing in spite of himself, and he knows that he would not laugh like this, not for anyone else who dared to call him something like that.

Kisumi, unpredictable, manages to be an exception to everything. Beneath the shelter of this sprawling tree, he should be close; instead, he has chosen, for once, to be decorous and coy, and he stands just out of reach.

“Well,” says Kisumi, “ _that’s_  how I’d ask someone out.”

Rin scoffs. “And this actually works?”

 _Scarlet._  That’s the colour of Kisumi’s smile, the way his lips curve.

Rin raises a hand to his temple. His fingers brush petals, soft and smooth against the cool bark of the twig. It’s thin, and it feels like it might snap beneath his touch.

He pulls it out, fiddles with it as he eyes Kisumi with a calculated patience.

Kisumi shrugs. “Just hypothetically.”

“Wait, Kisumi, you don’t mean - you never dated anyone? In all these years?”

Kisumi flashes him a smile again, dazzling, a downward spiral.

“Of course I did.”

“You just said - ”

“All of them asked  _me_  out,” says Kisumi, lightly, and then Rin feels like the world’s most colossal idiot.

“Oh,” he says.

“Ah, well, but…”

And Kisumi turns on his heel, tiny chuckle floating away on the spring breeze, and Rin feels it tickle the back of his neck, gentle, teasing.

They are the boys of seasons past, still. Young and fearless, lost in the single-minded pursuit of a dream, and Rin sees that fire in Kisumi every time he steps out on the court. He knows it well, because it burns in himself, an ever-present flame.

He’s still in his basketball jersey, sleeveless, a little sweaty. He hasn’t bothered throwing on a jacket. His bare shoulder glistens in the light as he spreads his hands wide, a gesture that’s sudden, vibrant and expansive, like he’s trying to hold the whole sky in his arms.

“If I  _were_  to ask someone out, I think I’d go  _big_. And cheesy.”

“Romantic,” Rin remarks.

Kisumi’s eyes twinkle. “Isn’t it? And I’d ask you to a place like this, with flowers, Rin - ”

His name sounds like an accident, created in carelessness, and it falls from Kisumi’s lips so beautifully. It slips out, Rin knows, without thinking, and he knows this because of Kisumi’s voice in that moment, the way they used to make their heated declarations in the playground. Chasing dreams, solemn promises of glory.

Rin hears it echo in the wind.  _You. Rin._

Kisumi’s arms drop to his side. The scarlet smile returns to his face, and he turns away.

“Just hypothetically,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Rin, clutching the flower in his hand. “Of course.”

He swallows, throat dry and breathless.


End file.
